


Détente

by fannishliss



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Multi, Natalia's troubled past, Natasha Needs a Hug, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Protective Clint, Red Room, They speak tiny bits of Russian, assassins in a bunker, but Clint is okay with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 09:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2020365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's training was nearly complete when the Red Room brought in the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Détente

**title: Détente**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)**fannishliss**  
pairings: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes; Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov  
rating: G  
spoilers: Canon loosely adapted from the comics.

Summary: Natasha's training was nearly complete when the Red Room brought in the Winter Soldier.  
  
=====

"I knew him," Natasha confessed.  "Before."

Clint said nothing.  When Natasha got into this mood, when her past came back to haunt her, silence was the best medicine.  Just sitting, shoulder to shoulder, weapons in easy reach, staring straight ahead -- Natasha could feel by the press of his arm, hip, leg against hers that he was with her, no matter what.

"In the Red Room," she whispered.

Clint clamped down on his visceral hatred of the program that had trained the Black Widow.   He didn't know everything about Natasha's time there, but he knew enough. He'd promised himself that if he ever went up against any of those bastards who'd torn Natasha apart, again and again, until they'd made her life nothing but a fabric of lies, that he'd take them down slowly, without mercy, in her name.

"Not like that," she whispered.  "Bozhe moy, hard to explain."  Clint liked the traces of Russian in Natasha's speech -- it meant she trusted him enough to let the guard down on her pain.

"My training was almost complete," she said.  "They brought him in. The Winter Soldier.  Hardly anyone knew he was there. They just put us in a room together. To fight."

Clint ground his teeth together.  All the anger, all the curses that wanted to explode out of him wouldn't help Natasha now.  She needed his silence, his unflinching acceptance of whatever parts of her story she chose to share.

"He was terrifying.  You've seen the footage."

"I caught a glimpse once in Pakistan. I couldn't have made the shot he took.  I saw him for just one second -- vanished without a trace."   Clint felt a kind of professional kinship with the Winter Soldier as a sniper par excellence -- his kills had been for the other side, but always immaculate.

"Hand to hand, he's nearly unstoppable.  They just put me in the room with him. I was fighting for my life.  He was huge, fast, agile, didn't telegraph.  Then I realized -- he wasn't trying to kill me.  He was playing with me.  Dancing."

Clint dared to turn his head, just a bit, to look at the side of her face.  She didn't show what she didn't want to show.  But with Clint, she showed enough.  There was just that hint of relaxation around her eyes.  Something almost fond.

"He danced with me.  Every day, for hours. Until I couldn't move. He never even broke a bone."

Natasha pressed the littlest finger of her left hand against Clint's, the finger they would break when she failed to meet expectations.

"Then he started to speak.  Just a few words.  Under his breath.  American.  He spoke Russian, but to me, he spoke English.  Made sure I understood. When we were in a lock, he'd speak, so no one could hear."

Clint could feel her finger tremble.  The thought of the Winter Soldier holding down the young Natasha, whispering to her in his deadly embrace -- Clint didn't like it.  But then, he didn't like a lot of things.

"You're gonna make it," she whispered, a remembered Brooklyn accent.  "You're gettin' outta here, doll.  You're gonna live.  I'll make sure of it."

"I thought he meant, escape.  That wasn't possible.  I had so many trackers.  You know."

Clint did know; he'd catalogued the scars left after they'd been dug out. He shuddered despite himself.

"He had a pattern.  He'd come in hard, and cold, and fight like a killing machine. Didn't talk, didn't look me in the eye, just fought like a living whirlwind.  Then after a day or so, he'd loosen up. More fluid, graceful -- just as deadly, but he became -- beautiful.  Then, sometimes, he would speak.  I knew, whatever they did to him -- it was worse than what they were doing to me.  They let me have a mind, a self.  It was all lies, whatever they wanted me to believe -- but with him, they didn't let him have anything. Nothing. They took it all.  But bit by bit, he'd get it back.  He knew himself, somehow.  And he did it.  He gave me what I needed to get out."

Clint stroked her pinky with his. "You're a hell of a fighter. I don't know if it's thanks to him though."

"No," Natasha said.  "Not the fight.  The whispers.  The knowledge that despite everything they'd done to him, the way they stripped him down to nothing, over and over, he was still in there. Holding on somehow.  If he could do it, so could I."

"And you did," Clint said.

Natasha nodded.  "He shot me in Odessa.  He shot me in DC. But he could have killed me.  He didn't.  He was cold, Clint.  They never stopped tearing him apart.  But he could have killed me, and even ice cold, rock hard -- he didn't."

"So I don't get to take him down?" Clint joked.

"He spared my life twice," Natasha said. "And I think, he might have saved it."

That's why Natasha had called him in.  That's why they were here, pressed together in a dank concrete bunker, underground, with the world's deadliest assassin on the other side of the room, glaring them down from getting any closer to him, or more importantly, to Steve, who was sleeping peacefully in the corner  while every other blood-stained assassin in the room watched each other like starving predators.

"I knew you," the Winter Soldier said.

Clint jerked, just a hair, but Natasha didn't move.

"Da," she said.

"Pauchok," he said, _little spider_.

"I made it out," she said.

"I shot you."

"I lived."

"Khorosho," _good_.

A minute passed in silence.

"Spasibo," he said.  "For living."

"Spasibo," she said.  "For showing me it could be done."

The Winter Soldier inclined his head.  The tension in the dank little room stepped down significantly.

"Don't kill us while we sleep, moy droog," Natasha said, and curled up with her head on Clint's thigh.

The Soldier said nothing, but closed his eyes, resting, almost certainly not sleeping.  Steve Rogers, the jerk, had lain down hours ago, the man least in need of sleep out of all of them, just putting his back to his old friend and relaxing peacefully into dreams.

Clint might pretend he didn't share Steve's faith in Bucky Barnes, staring at the weapon Steve's friend had been made into, but as Natasha's breath evened out, and her head and her hand rested warm and innocent on his thigh, he knew exactly what had kept Steve going, chasing the Winter Soldier despite all the odds.

"I'm glad you let us find you," Clint offered to the collection of shadows guarding his Captain across the room.

"Me too," Bucky said, and Clint, left hand on his bow, right hand in Natasha's baby-fine hair, closed his eyes.

=====

**Author's Note:**

> More notes: This fic was inspired by my action figures. Bucky was very suspicious of Natasha and Clint when they found his and Steve's hideout. I've wanted Natasha to tell Clint about Bucky for a while. This isn't the whole story, though. If you'd like to know more of my (prony) headcanon about the Soldier and Natalia, please let me know.
> 
> PS. Moy droog: my friend. I wondered if Natalia would call Winter her friend or her comrade, tovarisch. I decided on friend. If any of you know Russian, please let me know if "moy droog" is correct. I know that "my God!" is "bozhe moy" (which apparently is what Natasha says in the Avengers movie before they send her to India to get Bruce). I knew the word "droog" meaning friend, from A Clockwork Orange -- but I didn't know it was Russian. :)


End file.
